=begin pod :tag<self>

=TITLE About the Docs

=SUBTITLE Meta-documentation

This document collection represents the on-going effort to document the Perl 6 programming
language with the goals of being: comprehensive; easy to use; easy to
navigate; and useful to both newcomers and experienced Perl 6
programmers.

An HTML version of the documentation is located online at
L<https://docs.perl6.org>.

The official source for this documentation is located at L<perl6/doc on
GitHub|https://github.com/perl6/doc>.

This particular document is a quick overview of the process
described in more detail in L<CONTRIBUTING on GitHub|https://github.com/perl6/doc/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md>.
This document also provides a short introduction to writing Perl 6
Pod files, which can be rendered into HTML and other formats.

=head1 Structure

All of the documentation is written in Perl 6 Pod and kept in the C<doc/>
directory, and the C<doc/Language/> and C<doc/Type/> sub-directories.
These files are processed as collections of definitions or
"documentables", which are then post-processed and linked together.

=head1 Generating HTML from Pod

To generate HTML from the Pod files, you'll need:

=item A recent version of the Rakudo Perl 6 compiler

=item The Perl 6 modules Pod::To::HTML, Pod::To::BigPage, and URI::Escape
(can be installed via L<zef|https://github.com/ugexe/zef>).

=item B<Optional>: L<GraphViz|http://graphviz.org>, for creating graphs
of the relationships between Perl 6 types

=item B<Optional>: L<Atom Highlights|https://github.com/atom/highlights> and L<language-perl6|https://atom.io/packages/language-perl6>, for syntax
highlighting

To generate the documentation into the C<html/> folder, run:

=begin code :lang<shell>
perl6 htmlify.p6
=end code

To host the documentation from a web server, have Perl 5
and Mojolicious::Lite installed, then run:

=begin code :lang<shell>
perl app.pl daemon
=end code

=head1 Contributing

The documentation is written in Perl 6 Pod.

For a quick introduction to Perl 6 Pod, see L<Perl 6 Pod|https://docs.perl6.org/language/pod>.

For full details about the Perl 6 Pod specification, see L<Synopsis 26, Documentation|https://design.perl6.org/S26.html>.

=head2 Adding definitions

Documentables can be defined using an C<=headN> Pod directive, where
C<N> is greater than zero (e.g., C<=head1>, C<=head2>, …).

All of the paragraphs and blocks following that directive, up until the
next directive of the same level, will be considered part of the
documentable. So, in:

=begin code :allow<R> :skip-test
=head2 R<My Definition>

Some paragraphs, followed by some code:

    my Code $examples = "amazing";

Mind === blown.

=head3 Minor details about R<My Definition>

It's fantastic.

=head2 And now, for something completely different

…

=end code

The documentable R<My Definition> extends down to the C<=head2 And now…>.

Documentables may contain other documentables. Class documentables, for
example, often contain the methods the class implements.

Definitions must be in one of the following forms to be recognized as
the start of a documentable named, say, þ.  First the code in the document source:

=begin code :skip-test

=item X<C<How to use the þ infix> | infix,þ> (This a special case, which
is always considered a definition)

=item C<The þ Infix>

=item B<The C<þ> Infix>

=item C<Infix þ>

=item B<Infix C<þ>>

=item C<trait is cached> (A special case for the L<trait|/language/functions#Traits> documentables)

=end code

Then the results on the rendered page:

=item X<C<How to use the þ infix> | infix,þ> (This is a special case, which
is always considered a definition)

=item C<The þ Infix>

=item B<The C<þ> Infix>

=item C<Infix þ>

=item B<Infix C<þ>>

=item C<trait is cached> (A special case for the L<trait|/language/functions#Traits> documentables)

These items should now be searchable by using the search field in the HTML docs.

You can add emphasis with bold (B<V< B<> >>) or italicized (B<V< I<> >>),
with or without code formatting (B<V< C<> >>).  Due to current parser limitations,
special steps have to be taken to use B<V< X<> >> with other formatting codes; for example:

=begin code :skip-test
=item X<B<foo>|foo> a fancy subroutine
=end code

renders like this

=item X<B<foo>|foo> a fancy subroutine

Notice that text after a pipe ('|') has no formatting. Also note that B<V< C<> >>
preserves spaces and treats text as verbatim.
=end pod

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